The NEPAD Gender Task Force (NGTF) is holding a technical working session in Cairo, Egypt, from 14-17 September 2006. It is being attended by gender experts from 12 countries as well as special representatives covering all five regions of the Africa Union (AU).

The Chief Executive of the NEPAD Secretariat, Prof. Firmino Mucavele is officiating, together with the personal representative of Egypt’s President Hosny Mubarak and the president of the National Council of Women in Egypt. The goal of the meeting is to develop gender mainstreaming tools, guidelines and protocols for providing technical assistance to the relevant sectors.

This will provide the means to conduct a gender audit of institutional structures and carry out a comprehensive needs assessment of NEPAD priority sectors, programmes, and implementation mechanisms to guide the gender mainstreaming work of the NEPAD initiative.

The focus of the technical working session is on :
a pocket handbook for NEPAD management and the NEPAD governing structure
fact sheets containing background information and relevant articles on gender for commitments agreed at international and regional levels between 1975 and 2005
a draft customised sector-specific NEPAD manual.

The NEPAD Gender Task Force has been providing technical expertise for the last 12 months to the NEPAD Secretariat and AU organs, including the Pan African Parliament (PAP). In order to move the process of gender mainstreaming forward, it has become necessary to develop technical tools for guiding this process.

The Task Force is made up of gender experts drawn from women’s organisations, networks, academic and professional institutions.

Under its terms of reference and under the overall supervision of the NEPAD Gender and CSO Advisor, Litha Musyima-Ogana, the NEPAD Gender Task Force is mandated to :

Conduct a gender audit of the NEPAD management structure and processes within the context of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality signed by AU Heads of State in July 2004 and make recommendations for its implementation.

Carry out a comprehensive needs assessment of NEPAD priority sectors, programmes, and implementation mechanisms and make recommendations for gender mainstreaming per sector.

Develop gender mainstreaming tools, guidelines and protocols for the NEPAD sectors to guide the mainstreaming exercise and engender implementation process.

Provide technical assistance and gender mainstreaming expertise when called upon and give backup support during the implementation of a step by step gender mainstreaming timetable developed per sector by the NEPAD Secretariat.

Submit reports, documents, materials and experience gained through the process to the NEPAD Gender and CSO Advisor.

Share experience gained through the process in NEPAD dialogues, presentations and other relevant dialogues.

Update their organisations and networks on NEPAD’s gender mainstreaming and publicise it at national, regional and international levels in consultation with the NEPAD Secretariat.

Women constitute over 52% of the population of Africa now estimated at 800 million, of whom 340 million live on less than one US dollar a day.

Over 60% of those living below this level are women, many of whom have been condemned to abject poverty through cultural and traditional arrangements that socially exclude them from benefiting from economic growth and development, and from access to basic opportunities, basic goods and services.

Their poverty is automatically passed on to the next generation because the women are not able to break the vicious circle in which they find themselves due to their exclusion.